comparing policies in a globalising world: methodological ... › 2009 › ... · comparing...
Post on 30-May-2020
3 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
1
Comparing Policies in a Globalising World: Methodological Reflections
Susan Robertson and Roger Dale Centre for Globalisation, Education and Social Futures
University of Bristol
Contact address - s.l.robertson@bristol.ac.uk
Forthcoming in Andreas Hadjar & Christiane Gross (eds) (2015)
Education Systems and Inequalities, Bristol: Policy Press
2
Introduction This chapter explores the methodological challenges in comparing education policies
in a globalizing world. We begin with the claim that, for the most part, education
policies, programmes and practices have and continue to be located in national
territorial spaces, though this did not mean that the global was absent. Rather it is
possible to detect a ‘thin’ global policy regime historically, and arguably so in the years
following World War 2 until the 1980s and the rise of neoliberal policies. With the
advance of neoliberalism as a global political project, there is a thickening of global
policy making activity, on the one, hand, and the transformation of national and
regional education spaces, policies and outcomes that are in turn aligned with
globally-oriented agendas more closely tied to, and productive of, new social and
economic forms - global economic competitiveness, the creation of knowledge-based
service economies, and so on. In short, the form, content and scales at which
education policies had become more global. This in turn has generated important
challenges for researchers of education largely as education policies are no longer
‘national’ or indeed made by national states yet comparative education has tended to
take as its basic unit of comparison when it comes to education policy – that education
is sub/national and that education policies are made by the state.
This chapter will be developed in the following ways. We begin with sketching out the
contours of the changes that have taken place in the governance of education systems
as a result of global processes and the challenges to presents us with regarding how
we study, and compare, education policies. We do this by way of four ‘isms’ which we
problematise as litmusses of global educational change. We then raise the question
of comparison, and point to two conflicting ways that it can be used in studying
education policy In the final section of the paper we offer three (not exhaustive)
methodological reflections – each with a different dimension through which to
explore global education processes – time, space, and logics of governing in education
policymaking.
3
‘Isms’
We’ve argued that in order to study and compare global education policies, we need
to be very mindful of the conceptual categories that we use – in large part because
though the name of the category might remain the same, the meaning of that
category – such as the state, or nation, or indeed what we understand education to
be, has changed. We have referred to the practice of deploying these same categories
without asking questions about the meaning of that category, as methodological isms.
The basis of the way we understand and seek to use the term ‘isms’ comes from the
coiner of the term ‘methodological nationalism’, Herminio Martins. He sees it as
representative of ‘a general presumption (in sociological analysis)…that the ‘total’ or
‘inclusive’ society, in effect the nation-state, be deemed to be the standard, optimal
or even maximal ‘isolate’ for social analysis ‘(Martins (1974, 276) quoted in Chernilo
2006, 7). The idea of a ‘general presumption’ about the nature of the field of captures
the essence of what we mean by the ‘isms’. They can be seen as ‘pre-theoretical’, too
obvious in their (assumed unchanging and unchanged) form and importance to
require explicit theorizing, or being addressed as objects of inquiry, to the point where
they become ‘ossified’, for example, as current analyses of education policy tend to
retain the same methodological and theoretical assumptions in massively changed
circumstances. It is this that we refer to as ‘isms’-- fixed, frozen and taken for granted,
representing and embodying significant forms of the distortion and possible
understandings of education policies, through the restrictions they place on the scope
and targets of investigation. The four ‘isms’ we will be discussing here are
methodological nationalism; methodological statism; educationism; and spatial
fetishism.
As we have noted, methodological nationalism, is based on a –frequently implicit—
set of assumptions that essentially equates ‘society’ with ‘the nation’. It operates both
about and for the nation-state to the point where the only reality we are able to
comprehensively describe statistically is a national, or at best an international, one
(Dale, 2005: 126). This is exacerbated by the tendency to juxtapose an
4
unreconstructed methodological nationalism to underspecified conceptions of
‘globalisation’ in a zero-sum relationship; that is, as the global has taken on more
functions and power this has been assumed to be at the expense of a new
disempowered state. This is far from the case, in that in many cases the national state
itself has been a major force in advancing regional and global projects.
There are close relationships between methodological nationalism and what we refer
to as methodological statism, the tendency to assume that there is a particular form
intrinsic to all states, is closely related to this. Methodological statism essentially takes
the version of the ‘state’ as found in ‘Western democracy’ as ‘the organizing principle
of political modernity’ (Fine, 2003, 460, quoted in Chernilo 12). For Chernilo this
constitutes the ‘rather mythical image of the nation state as the final and necessary
form of social and political organization in modernity’ (ibid). And one further, relevant,
consequence of this is that it makes political, rather than economic or cultural
boundaries, the dominant means of differentiating societies from each other, setting
distinct limits to both the bases and the product of useful comparison, since the
national has become the basis of the collection of statistics of all kinds, with ‘the state’
(the historical generator of ‘statistics’) typically seen as the major collector of such
data. Hence, as “…public authority has been demarcated by discrete boundaries of
national territory…so, too, has the articulation of societal interests and identities that
both buttress and make demands upon this authority” (Ruggie, 1993: 8). However, in
a globalising era, the particular combination of responsibilities and activities that
nation-states have been assumed to be responsible for can now be seen as historically
contingent rather than functionally necessary, or even optimal, to the point where the
question can be raised about the “…implications of a world in which the mutually
reinforcing relations of territory, authority and societal interests and identities can no
longer be taken for granted” (ibid.: 9).
The depth of the penetration of these kinds of assumptions on the social sciences is
summed up by Ruggie as displaying; “…an extraordinarily impoverished mind-
set…that is able to visualize long term challenges to the system of states only in terms
of entities that are institutionally substitutable for the state” (1993: 143). The point
5
here is not to suggest that the state as an actor is unimportant. It has, and continues
to be, a very significant and powerful ensemble of institutions that is able to mobilize
power and act. Rather it is to focus upon, first, the way the idea of the state represents
itself as a universal form rather an a particular representation that has been
universalised, and second, on the way the state itself, as both a project and container
of power, has evaded close intellectual scrutiny. In relation to this first point, of the
universalization of the form of the state, this has made investigations into, for
example, the Europe Union, as also involving a different form of the state, difficult but
important (see Shore, 2006). Difficult as an assumed form of the state is essentialized;
important as it points to the need to develop new concepts that help identify and
reveal the changing geometry of state power.
We can illustrate the points made above about methodological statism by recognizing
that the national state can no longer be taken-for-granted as the only, or most
important, actor in the area of education. If we look closely at the governance of
education—that is the combinations and coordination of activities, actors/agents, and
scales, through which ‘education’ is constructed and delivered in national societies—
we can identify four categories of activity that collectively make up educational
governance (that are for the sake of exposition taken to be mutually exclusive and
collectively exhaustive), funding; provision or delivery; ownership; and regulation.
These activities may in principle be carried out independently of each other and by a
range of agents other than the state –though the state remains a possible agent of
educational governance and at a multiple set of scales, from the local to the global.
Educationism: This refers to the tendency to regard ‘education’ as a single category
for purposes of analysis, with an unproblematically accepted set of common
objectives, and a set of implicitly shared knowledge, practices, assumptions and
outcomes. This results from the fact that Education has been possibly the central
project in modernizing societies. Since the early nineteenth century, mass education
has been a crucial element of the modern nation state in the interests of collective
6
progress and in the interests of equality and justice. Educational systems are almost
invariably seen as rationalizing social projects whose universal expansion necessarily
brings improvement and emancipation. This results in education being treated as
abstract, fixed, absolute, ahistorical and universal, when, for instance, no distinctions
are made between its use to describe purpose, process, practice, and outcomes. It is
this ‘flattening’ of ‘education’, and the reluctance to recognise that there are crucial
relationships between different representations of education, that are being occluded
or disguised by the failure to distinguish between them, that makes it so important to
identify and seek to go beyond educationism.
While the term ‘education’ potentially embraces the whole range sets of practices,
processes, institutions and outcomes, carried out in its name, in practice debate and
discussion tends to take place within the category Education’, rather than challenging
it. There is little questioning of the principles of Education (even there may often be
little agreement between them), and this often persists in the face of evidence to the
contrary (see e g, Benavot, 2002). The label education is also normative in that
education is invariably viewed as a good thing (and the more the better). However,
and crucially, this enables the avoidance of the fact that education is always about the
acquisition of particular knowledges, by particular groups of individuals, under
different circumstances, with the result that how far and in what ways it may or may
not empower an individual or group, will depend upon a range of features of their
social location. The point here is that ‘educationism’ occludes and ‘flattens’ all these
multiple forms, or reduces them to one particular set of understandings.
Fundamentally, ’educationism’ is the product and instantiation of analyses based in
examining definitions and examples, rather than in examining the range of what is
done in the name of these definitions—which, crucially, may be unintended as well as
intended. It is assumed to be ameliorative, with any questions to do with the forms
and outcomes of the attempts at amelioration. So, the crucial point for us here is that
‘education’ requires explanation rather than being taken for granted.
Spatial fetishism: Brenner (2003: 38) describes spatial fetishism as ’…a conception of
social space that is timeless and static, and thus immune to the possibility of historical
7
change’. Failing to problematize space, or to see that space itself is both constituted
by, and constitutive of social relations and structures, is a problem for the analysis of
education policy, more generally, and global education policy more specifically. The
reason is partly contained in the phrase – ‘global education policies’. Education
policies are always about change – even if by ‘change’ we mean containing events
sufficiently so as to put a brake on those dynamics that might otherwise change things.
For instance, those with social class privileges are likely to try and contain particular
social groups who might organize so as to create more opportunities for social
mobility from the classes below. Education policies might be advanced to ensure that
things remain the same. Put a different way, education policies are aimed at
re/organizing and re/ordering social relations through structures and strategies.
Education polices are thus concerned with social relations which are always spatial in
some way.
Some spatialized relations might not matter in their outcomes, but others will. For
instance, global policies such as school choice typically do for they will have very
different spatial implications for families; not all families will have the financial
resources, time, or conditions of work, to move children across the city so as to access
a school that might be the ‘best choice’ (Ball et al, 1995). Other families will face not
having a choice as their village or town only has one school. Space also matters in the
organization of learning. And indeed, some education policies might have, as their
intended purpose and outcome, the separation of social groups – smart kids in science
streams versus the not so smart kids in general streams; girls in girls only schools -
boys in boys only schools; leafy neighborhood schools versus schools in dense city
spaces, and so on. These spatial differences matter as they shape social relations, on
the one hand, and are often key dynamics in systems of social stratification, on the
other.
If we now add the spatial category ‘global’ to our analysis, we need to ask what kind
of category it is, and what work it enables/disables in relation to the national, or local
- which are alternative scales from which strategic projects of rule are launched. In
this case, we are interested in the education policy work that those actors operating
8
with a global scale horizon advance. In some cases the global scale enables actors to
act in rather more omnipotent ways – where the global scale is invoked as a higher
form of authority and rule. In other cases, the global scale enables policy projects to
advance quickly – unencumbered by institutions and other actors who might have
different views about the probity or not of these policies. Rescaling is thus a useful
spatial move for education policy makers. For the comparative theorist, the question
to be asked is: what is the role of space in global policy, and how might we compare
the different capacities of policy actors to engage spatially.
Critical Comparison
The importance of the use—and misuse—of comparison in education policy lies in the
fact that it has become a significant consequence and outcome of the changing
relationships between globalization and education policy. This development is
important in a number of ways in understanding how particular understandings of the
relationships between globalization and education policy have arisen, and the
consequences of these for the ways that we might try to explain them.
There are two main ways that we can approach ‘comparisons’. On the one hand, we
can ask: in what contexts is it useful, to whom and for what purposes? And on the
other, what does it tell us about the relationships between the different contexts and
outcomes—what elements can be identified as important and how? The differences
between these two sets of questions are crucial in understanding the contributions of
comparison in addressing issues of governance of education. In the first case, the
comparison is used as a ‘resource’, a contribution to the achievement of particular
ends. In the other case, the comparison itself becomes the ‘topic’ of inquiry. In the
first case, the findings themselves are taken to provide the explanation; in the second
case, they generate further sets of questions. The best example of the difference
between these two approaches is the use of large, quantitative cross national data
sets. Those using comparison as a resource take these data for granted, and ask what
9
we can learn from them; the other asks on what bases these data were compiled, and
hence what was being compared.
This is a crucial issue in understanding global governance in and of education. In the
first case, comparison itself becomes a crucial tool of governance, with comparison
being seen as a resource whereas in the second case comparison itself becomes the
topic of investigation, the means of – critically, in the sense of problematizing, not
taking for granted—analyzing it. The first sees comparison as a tool for providing
generalized solutions, the second as a means of generating explanations. While
comparison as resource might be seen as offering a crucial form of ‘lesson learning’,
one striking point about PISA is that it does not really offer particular models for
emulation. For instance, the success of Finland in PISA tests led to the development
of a mini-industry (see Sahlberg, 2011) of visitors eager to find the secret of
educational success, but they found only that the ‘Finnish’ model departed in almost
all ways from that implied by the OECD—well educated and paid teachers, no national
testing, etc. This illustrates another aspect of the kinds of comparison carried out by
PISA; what are compared are outputs, in the form of test scores generated by PISA
itself, not the different educational processes that led to them, nor the criteria used
to produce them.
In adopting this second ‘topic’ oriented approach regarding comparison of global
education policies, we need to ask ourselves: what exactly are we comparing? In our
view this is an ontological and epistemological, as well as a methodological, question.
By this we mean that in considering comparison methodologically, we are also making
decisions about how we think the social world works, and what might count as a
means of knowing that world. Does the social world operate according to a set of
regularities, and in the world that global education policy is present in, are we able to
bring those regularities into view and decide on what causes what? Positivists are
likely to argue yes, this is the case. Others might argue the social world is simply a
social construction by individuals. Understanding global education policy using this set
of assumptions means exploring how individuals shape their own understandings
around – for instance, a global policy – and from there comparisons can be made
10
between different social constructions. Interpretivists are likely to place the weight of
their approach on how meanings constructed about experiences of events or social
phenomena – such as how does one make sense of world class universities, or systems
of audit. Or, do we argue that there is more to the social world than what we see,
and that these less visible structures and conjunctions of possibilities, shape what it is
possible to think, say, and do, and so therefore have effects.
This latter - broadly critical realist - approach is the one we favour, in that we take the
view that social realities are socially stratified, and that the causal mechanisms and
powers shaping events are not necessarily visible to the researcher though the
outcomes are (Sayer, 2000). Working backwards to work out the relationship between
outcomes, mechanisms and causal powers is an important procedure for a critical
realist researcher. Now let’s complicate things by asking: what might a critical realist
compare? Here we find George Steinmetz’s (2004) work very helpful. Steinmetz,
argues that comparison often “…operates along two dimensions - events and
structures, corresponding to one of the main lines of ontological stratification of the
social-real” (2004: 372). While positivists tend to focus on ‘events’ and view social
systems as fixed and closed, “…critical realists insist on the ontological difference
between events and mechanisms and on the ubiquity of contingent, non-recurrent,
conjunctural determination of events within open systems like the social. This means
that even events incomparable at the phenomenal level still may be amenable to
explanation in terms of a conjuncture of generative causal mechanisms” (opt Cit). That
is, comparisons are made between our explanations of the underlying causal
processes and mechanisms at work and their outcomes in terms of the political
nature of space, how it is governed, its social relations, subjectivities and uneven
outcomes. A critical realist approach to comparing global education policies would
thus focus attention on the conjuncture of causal mechanisms and their outcomes,
and it is our explanations of these processes at work that sits at the heart of
comparison. We’ll return to this in our conclusion. For now, let’s explore what might
be gained by using different dimensions – time, space, governing tools and power - as
a basis for comparison.
11
Three Critical Methodological Reflections on Global Education Policies
In this section we develop three methodological reflections around different
dimensions through which a comparison can be made. These are by no means
exhaustive; rather they are meant to encourage you to think imaginatively,
systematically, and critically, about the different ways in which comparative research
on global education policies can be carried out.
Methodological Reflection 1: The value of temporal comparisons – global teacher policy - from thin to thick globalization of education
One way in which we can compare education policies is by asking: how might we
compare a particular kind of education issue of problem using time as one of the
variables. Of course comparisons using time can be developed either synchronically
or diachronically. By synchronic we mean comparing, for instance, different global
institutions, and how these organizations sought to shape an education policy issue
during a particular temporary frame – such as 2000-2015. Or, we can compare an issue
area over time diachronically, and ask: what form, shape, and at what scale, did this
education issue get framed, and what role did the global scale play over a given set of
time period – for instance in the post-World War II period until 2000, and from 2000
until 2015. If one was ambitious, both of these temporary investigations into a policy
issue and the changing distribution between policy actors could be very revealing. The
world does not stand still in education, and one of the most interesting developments
in the education policy world has been the rise of global actors in shaping policy over
the past decade, and the governing tools or instruments that have been developed to
enable this.
Consider this policy question: Has the governing of teachers’ work changed over time
and what, if any, role have the international agencies played in this? The first move,
of course, is to look back in time to determine if, indeed, international agencies have
had any role in shaping policy for teachers. After all, the development and growth of
12
education systems has been tightly bound to the rise of the nation state. A second
move would be to establish when and which international agencies took it upon
themselves to shape teacher policy, and from there ask: why, and how?
Digging a little deeper, we begin to see that though national and sub-governments
were the key shapers of teacher policy, this did not mean that the international
agencies were silent or disinterested. Far from it. Indeed two international agencies
over the period 1950-2000 were very interested in teacher policy at the global level;
UNESCO and the ILO (Robertson, 2012). Whilst respecting the right of Member States
of the UN system to determine teacher policy, they nevertheless published an
ILO/UNESCO Recommendation in October 1966 setting out the rights and
responsibilities of teachers, including international standards for their initial
preparation and further education, recruitment, employment and so on. As a
Recommendation, it did not have the weight of authority or legal ‘bite’ that one might
see behind a sub/national teacher policy. This meant that governments in national
settings could ignore this guidance. Connell (2009) suggests that this resulted in a
broad range of approaches in national settings as to how teachers were prepared,
what power and autonomy they might have in their schools, and so on.
Further investigation reveals that the status quo held amongst the international
agencies regarding teacher policy until around 2000, when agencies like the OECD
(2000, 2005, 2009), and more recently the World Bank (2003, 2011), have become
active in stating their concerns, framing the issues and solutions, and promoting
participation in a data collection (benchmarking and indicators) exercise what would
quantify the quality of teachers and teacher policy and those countries who had
participated in the exercise. The important issue for the comparative researcher is to
find out what might explain this sudden, close scrutiny, on the one hand, and to
determine if, at all, this has altered teacher policy and practice in national settings, on
the other. A critical theorist is also likely to consider what this shift means for teachers.
Does it place limits on teachers as workers to be in control over their labour, or open
up new possibilities? Does the presence, and agendas, of the World Bank and the
13
OECD set in train a rather different set of dynamics around teacher policy, how, and
why this might matter.
As we have shown elsewhere (see Robertson, 2012; 2013), the OECD and the World
Bank, have entered into the teacher policy space – legitimating their presence and
concern by arguing that teachers and teaching matter to pupil performance, and pupil
performance matters to developing globally competitive economies. This line of
argument has been given weight by other global actors who have become very
prominent in the education policy field – including the giant education firm – Pearson
Education, the global consulting firm McKinsey and Co., (Barber and Mourshed, 2007;
Mourshed et al 2010) and foundations that include the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. Paradoxically this global conversation has not involved teachers in any
significant way, and it might have via their global union, Education International.
Instead, the OECD seems to have acquired quite a strong voice in framing the nature
of the problem and its solution, and is currently attempting to speak directly to
teachers through its specially designed toolkit for teachers. Now, rather than a
conversation that teachers might have with their sub/ national unions and
sub/national Ministries of Education based on respecting their expertise and
professional autonomy, teachers are given a one size firs all set of guidance notes to
operationalise by the OECD (2014), whilst at the same time that teachers are made
aware that they have also been ranked as part of a system of comparative
performance.
This short account exploring how to compare a global education policy – such as
teacher policy - using diachronic and synchronic time as dimensions reveals the
insights that can be had from using such a lens. Time, of course, is always linked to
space – and actors are always located in time and space. But by looking at global
education over in this way – we are able to appreciate that even in the post war years
(for instance with the Declaration of Human Rights established in 1948 – with a strong
statement there in the right to free public education) there was what amounts to as a
‘thin’ global governance. By ‘thin’ we mean that though there were actors and
guidelines, the weight of authority and legitimacy to shape education policy continued
14
to rest with the nation states and sub/national governments. However, from 2000
onwards UNESCO and the ILO have been joined by a newer set of global players (such
as OECD, World Bank, McKinsey and Co., Pearson Education, Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation) actively shaping teacher policy, and indeed crowding out UNESCO and
the ILO as far as power, authority and influence goes. We might call this current period
‘thick’ global governance in that the global actors now dominate the framing of
teacher policy. Elsewhere we have developed this analysis more fully (see Robertson,
2012. 2013), However, for this purpose here – it is sufficient to point to the ways in
which we are able to see shifts in what scales (local, national, global) become more
dominant in shaping particular education policies and to propose reasons for what we
think might be explanations.
Methodological Reflection 2: The value of comparing spatial recalibrations - rescaling education policymaking
We argued earlier that space matters in education policy analysis (Robertson, 2010).
We also argued that it particularly matters in thinking about global education policies
in that it helps to focus attention on what kind of spaces we are comparing, and how
is space itself used to advance policies at a global scale that might have been more
difficult at the local or indeed national. Put a different way, the comparativist is being
asked to compare the difference that space itself makes – in this case the global - in
being able to advance a particular set of education policies.
At this point it is helpful to introduce the idea of scale; a spatial term which refers to
a level at which particular kinds of institutions and actors concentrate – and from
there seek to organize or govern social, political and economic activity (Smith, 2000).
In the previous reflection we argued that the global scale does house institutions who
engage in framing and shaping education policy – but until recently their influence
was fairly weak largely as these institutions lacked authority and legitimacy. Education
policy was regarded as the preserve of nation states. However from the 1980s
onwards, major changes began to take place within and between nations – as a new
15
political project – informed by neoliberal ideas – began to be rolled out in countries
like the UK, USA, Chile, New Zealand, and Australia.
The globalizing of neoliberalism has had major consequences for the form, scope and
purpose of much education policy – as it was used to bring in what Peter Hall (1989)
calls a third order change. By third order change he means a radical rupture in the
ideational base that informs the what, who and how of policy. In this case, introducing
neoliberalism into what were mostly Keynesian inspired social orders meant setting
policies to work on aligning education more closely with the economy, making
education into a competitive services sector, introducing policies that aimed to
encourage a more competitive entrepreneurial identity, and rewarding institutions for
acting in more economically efficient ways (Dale and Robertson, 2013). Bringing in a
new social and economic order, however, is itself not straightforward. Previous ways
of organizing social life, and the norms that ensured these ways of life are embedded
and reproduced, are thus challenged and transformed into new practices with rather
different logics, forms of reason and outcomes. In doing so, education space and its
constitutive social relations are also reworked in new ways.
One strategic way forward for governments and aligned actors was to rescale
(Robertson et al, 2002). By this we mean that strategic actors relocated themselves,
or ceded some of their authority, to a new scale – above or below the nodal scale that
had been a key passage point, or site of authority, for governing in order to drive these
new political initiatives forward. Decentralisation policies became a favoured set of
education policies. They aimed to use the local scale to advance initiatives that were
likely to be blocked at the higher level. In this case local communities were asked to
take on the responsibility for education policies aimed at generating competition and
efficiencies, oversighting the work of teachers, aligning the school with the needs of
local business, and so on.
However policymaking capacity – or some element of sovereignty-- was also moved
above the nation-state, to the regional and the global, so as to advance particular
projects with rather different interests. A good example here is the Bologna Process –
16
an education policy that emerged in 1999 which has had a huge impact on reshaping
the degree architecture of higher education sector in Europe, as well as bringing in a
new competency approach to learning. The initial move to rescale came from the
French Minister for Education, Claude Allegre – who was particularly frustrated with
the difficulties of getting change in the French academy. With universities being
turned to as a means of generating a competitive knowledge economy, dealing with
‘recalcitrant’ academics willing to take to the barracks is quite a challenge (Ravinet,
2005). In 1998, Allegre used the celebrations surrounding the 800 years since the
establishment of the Sorbonne, to announce the launch of a European Higher
Education Space. At this point – only four countries were part of this agreement –
Italy, Germany, the UK and France. In 1999, the Sorbonne Declaration morphed into
the Bologna Process – an agreement ratified by 29 European countries. Since signing,
the Bologna Process has grown rapidly in membership and reach – with 47 members
and others who declare themselves Bologna compliant.
There are many interesting angles that the comparativist can be interested in here as
this new regional space is created. Questions might include: how does this scalar
project – the European Higher Education Area, compare with other similar regional
projects where the capacity to govern higher education is being rescaled. What is the
relationship new between this new regional scale and its capabilities, and those that
remain at the institutional and national levels? Who gets to operate on which scale,
and what are the outcomes for these different actors of any differences? Are all
members of the European Higher Education area treated the same, and how might
differences be accounted for? Are there convergences across the European Higher
Education as a result, and new points of divergence, and what underlying mechanisms
account for these outcomes? Has the ceding of power upwards generated the kind of
outcomes Allegre was envisioning, and what explanations might we consider for what
dynamics seem to be in play? In suggesting this array of questions, in our view any
one of these would offer a fascinating exploration for the comparative scholar in
bringing scalar processes into view and using space as an entry point into comparing
the changing strategies, structures and social relations and arise from a particular kind
of education policy.
17
Methodological Reflection 3: The value of comparing governing logics - the OECD and its global indicators
As we have noted elsewhere in this chapter, ‘comparison’ can be used in a range of
ways in looking at education policy. At its simplest and least useful, it entails looking
at two different entities, say countries, and asking how they are different from each
other. This can provide fascinating contrasts, but it tells us little if anything about the
nature of those differences and what, if anything, we can learn from them. More
recently and relevantly, considerable importance has been placed on what we have
referred to as ‘competitive comparison’, using comparison to construct a ranking of
particular entities across particular qualities; PISA is the obvious example here.
However, here again, the use of comparisons for ranking tells us little about the
substance of the policies and practices that produced them; they cannot, for instance,
identify the reasons for the differences of importance. One key explanation of this is
that ‘simple’ comparison between practices does not enable us to recognize the
different rationales for which they are carried out, or what we will refer to here as the
‘logics’ informing them.
The way we will do this is to consider the nature of the interventions into the
education field made by the OECD over the past 60 years or so. We will point very
briefly to the nature of the intervention and then to the logic(s) that seem to be
informing it. We should also note that in seeking logics, we also have to consider the
purposes of programmes, since the two are closely linked, though rarely explicitly so.
However, in doing this it is important to identify the OECD’s main priorities for
education. Very broadly, following Rizvi and Lingard’s analysis of Papadopoulos’
(1994) history of OECD work in education, we can distinguish three main periods; in
the 1960s, the main emphasis was on the ‘quality’ of education; in the 1970s, equality
of opportunities and democratizing education, while in the 19980s the focus shifted
to alignment with economic policy (and it is important to note that the term
‘globalisation’ is not mentioned in Papdopoulos’ 1994 book). This brief history
18
indicates which issues were of greatest concern to OECD members (and it is important
to note that the OECD’s agenda is formally determined by its members, whose voting
strength tends to be related to the size of their contribution, with USA and Japan
contributing over half the total funding).
One of the first OECD programme that concerned education was manpower
forecasting. This arose in the context of postwar recovery, and its logic was based on
an assumed link between the level of qualified manpower and economic growth. This
was underpinned by a pervasive attachment to the logic of ‘human capital formation’,
based on the inference that labour could be treated as a form of capital, and that its
output could be enhanced through education.
A second logic deployed by the OECD can be found in the method of peer review that
became quite prominent in the 1970s. This was based on a logic of ‘lesson learning’
from one’s peers (countries). Reviews of national systems were carried out by experts
from other countries, and fed back to those in the reviewed countries, with the idea
that they would point to practices elsewhere that might be usefully adopted.
More recently—and following the creation of a separate Directorate for Education in
2002 —logics have tended to go into three, related, directions. The first was an
‘ideological vocabulary of reform’, which followed the success of neoliberal politics in
USA and UK in particular; this emphasized the need to limit government intervention
and to base governance on what was known as New Public Management (which
essentially meant that states should be governed as far as possible on the basis of
market principles); growing technical expertise in monitoring (taking the place of the
earlier logic of peer review); and an increasing emphasis on quantification in shaping
education policy, via the INES project (see Bottani, 1996). It is interesting to note that
these might be seen in different ways as key elements that came together to form
PISA. They represent a common logic of suspicion of ‘politics’ and the need to provide
accurate information for the organization of not just the economy, but the whole field
of pubic administration.
19
It should be evident now that PISA did not appear from nowhere, but emerged on
ground already well prepared for it through programmes such as INES, but it goes
beyond them in a number of ways, which are based on distinctive logics. What PISA
provides, in a nutshell, is a tool for evaluating education systems worldwide by testing
the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students (emphasis added). REF??It claims to
involve 400,000 students in 57 countries, making up 90% of the world economy, with
nationally representative samples representing 20 million 15 year olds from 30 OECD
and 27 partner countries (OECD, 2006).
Most importantly, PISA rests on what might be called a ‘nominalist’ logic—that all
entities called ‘national education systems’ must necessarily have sufficient in
common for it to be possible to diagnose them with the same set of tools, and to offer
advice based on those findings. From a comparative policy perspective, the most basic
flaw in the use of the PISA data arises directly from this, because, as we noted in the
‘critical comparison’ section above, the findings are themselves taken as sufficient
explanations of national educational states of affairs; they constitute explanations
rather than themselves requiring explanation, and this in itself shifts the focus away
from their causes and on to the consequences that are manufactured through the
PISA instruments.
Three other significant features of the logics informing PISA may be discerned: it rests
on a logic of (especially statistical) expertise, and education policy is no longer best
served by deliberations between variously informed and interested parties: in itself, it
provides an accurate account of the ‘health’ of education systems, and offers
remedies that will be universally valuable—such as evaluation systems; and it paves
the way for the logic of competitive comparison, across particular dimensions of
education.
Conclusions
20
Comparison is, above all, about problematising, rather than taking for granted and in
this case problematizing phenomena that we have come to talk global education
policies. As we have argued, through comparing things that are familiar to us with
things with the same name in other places, we learn that there are different
understandings of the same things in different places, at different times, with different
origins and meanings. More briefly, comparing produces the possibility of difference,
and it might be hoped, a desire to understand and explain those differences. So, a
major issue for comparative approaches is to examine the relationships between
nominally similar phenomena, and here, too, a comparative approach to global
policies is valuable, not only indistinguishing meanings and uses, but seeking to
explain those differences. And if this second step may not always be possible, the
recognition that the same names are given to different phenomena in itself helps us
to problematize those phenomena, rather than take them for granted, or assume that
they ‘must’ somehow be comparable.
Finally, we suggest that it is also very useful in thinking about global education policy
to ask: who compares and for what purposes? Recognising Novoa and Yariv-Mashal’s
(2005) excellent account of the possible purposes of comparison, which contrasts its
use as a form of enquiry, it does require us to recognize that there are sides to be
taken, and these have consequences for our analyses. All these issues are important
when we are considering ‘global’ education policies---and this is especially the case
when we recognize that a failure to problematize does not result in the status quo
being taken for granted, but for it to be taken as an acknowledged fact.
References Ball, S., Bowe, R. and Gewirtz, S., (1995). Circuits of schooling: a sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts. The Sociological Review, 43(1), 52-78.
Barber, M. and Mourshed, M., (2007) How the World’s Best-Performing Schools Come out on Top, McKinsey & Company.
Benavot, A. (2002) "A critical analysis of comparative research." Prospects 32 (1).pp 51-73.
21
Bottani, N. (1996) OECD international education indicators International Journal of Educational Research, 25 (6), 279–288
Brenner, Neil (2003) New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of the state. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Chernilo, Daniel (2006) Social Theory’s Methodological Nationalism: Myth and Reality European Journal of Social Theory 9 (1), 5-22
Connell, R. (2009) Good teachers on dangerous ground: toward a new view of teacher quality and professionalism, Critical Studies in Education, 50 (3), pp. 213-229.
Dale, R. (2005) "Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education." Comparative education 41 (2), 117-149.
Dale, R., and Robertson, S., (2013) Global education policy, in N. Yeates (ed.). Global Social Policy, Bristol: Policy Press.
Fine, R. (2003) ‘Taking the “Ism” out of Cosmopolitanism: An Essay in Reconstruction’, European Journal of Social Theory 6 (4) 51–70
Hall, P. A. (1989). The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Martins, H. (1974) ‘Time and theory in sociology’ in J. Rex (ed.) Approaches to sociology: an introduction to major trends in British sociology, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 246–94.
Mourshed, M. Chijioke, C. and Barber, M., (2010) How the World’s Most Improved Systems Keep Getting Better, McKinsey & Company.
OECD (2000) Schooling for Tomorrow, OECD Scenarios, Paris: OECD.
OECD (2001) Knowledge Management in the Learning Society, Paris: OECD.
OECD (2006) OECD PISA 2006, Paris: OECD [www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2006/39725224.pdf - last accessed 5th April, 2015].
OECD (2009) Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS, OECD: Paris.
OECD (2014) TALIS for Teachers, Paris: OECD.
OECD, (2005) Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers, Paris: OECD.
Papadopoulos, G. (1994) Education 1960-1990: the OECD perspective Paris: OECD
Ravinet, P. (2005) The Sorbonne meeting and declaration: actors, shared vision and Europeanisation, Third Conference on Knowledge and Politics, University of Bergen 18th-19th May.
Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. (2009) "The OECD and global shifts in education policy." International handbook of comparative education. Springer Netherlands, 437-453.
22
Robertson, S., (2010) Spatialising the sociology of education, in M. Apple, S. Ball and L.A. Gandin (ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education, London and New York: Routledge.
Robertson, S. (2012) Placing teachers in global governance agendas, Comparative Education Review, 56, (4), pp.584-607.
Robertson, S., (2013) Teachers’ work, denationalization and transformations ion the field of symbolic control: a comparative account, in T. Seddon and J. Levin (eds.). Educators, Professionalism and Politics, London and New York: Routledge.
Robertson, S., Bonal, X., & Dale, R. (2002). GATS and the Education Service Industry: The Politics of Scale and Global Reterritorialization. Comparative Education Review, 46(4), 472–495.
Ruggie, J. (1993) Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations International Organization 47 (1), 139-174
Shore, C. (2006) Governance without Statehood European Law Journal 12 (6),pp. 709-24
Sahlberg, P. (2011) The fourth way of Finland, J. of Educational Change, 12, pp. 173-85.
Smith, N. (2000) Scale. In Johnston, R.J. et al., (eds.) The dictionary of human geography (fourth edition) Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
World Bank (2003) Lifelong Learning for a Global Knowledge Economy, Washington, DC: World Bank.
World Bank (2011) SABER – Teachers, Objectives, Rationale, Methodological Approach and Products, Washington: The World Bank Group.
top related